


A Theory of Parallels

by bratfarrar



Category: Stargate Atlantis, Stargate SG-1
Genre: Alternate Universe, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-04
Updated: 2014-08-27
Packaged: 2017-12-13 23:20:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 6,108
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/830023
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bratfarrar/pseuds/bratfarrar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The one where John and Rodney are roommates in college, but there's still a Stargate in their future.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. La-la-la-Lobachevski

**Author's Note:**

> If John's life had gone a little differently, he might have gone to a different college and had a particular someone as a roommate....
> 
> And who knows how that might have changed things?

Rodney opens the door just enough to glare through and snarls, “What do you want?” It’s not a very good snarl—his voice isn’t deep enough, and he sounds more like a whiny teenager (which he technically is, but: not important) than anything worth fearing. The main thing is the volume of hostility behind it, and he’s got lots of that. Enough to make the person on the other side of the door take a step back, although admittedly, that might be because he hasn’t brushed his teeth in a day and a half.  
  
But despite Rodney’s best _I will kill you slowly_ look, the guy doesn’t do more than put down his duffel bag and extend a hand. He’s kind of skinny and needs a haircut, and can’t possibly be on the football team, which is the best Rodney can say of him at the moment, given that he woke Rodney out of a much-needed nap and has the audacity to look like he doesn’t realize what he’s done.  
  
“Um. Room 307. You’re Rodney McKay, right? I’m John Sheppard, your new roommate.” It’s been a shitty, shitty week, and most of that’s due to Rodney’s shitty ex-roommate, so he feels perfectly justified in shutting the door in the guy’s—John’s—face. “Hey!”  
  
Ignoring the aggrieved yelp, Rodney picks his way through the disaster zone which is his room in the wake of said shitty ex-roommate, and goes back to bed. He’s almost finished mummifying himself when there’s the scratch and click of the door being unlocked and opened.  
  
“You know, they gave me a key when they—oh.” Rodney peels the covers a little so he can see John, who’s staring at the mess with open dismay. “Please tell me your last roommate went on a bender and you just haven’t gotten around to cleaning up.”  
  
“My last roommate went on a bender and I haven’t gotten around to cleaning up,” Rodney says as snottily as he can manage, and sits up, pulling the sheets entirely off the bed as he does so.  
  
“Wait, really?”  
  
  
  
And then Rodney has the surreal experience of watching his new roommate spend the next two hours cleaning the room. He tries at first to ignore John, burying his face in the mattress and pretending that he is in fact a mummy, because while it would suck to have his brain removed through his nose, at least he wouldn’t have to put up with idiots anymore. But John keeps poking him and asking questions like “Is it okay if I throw away this half-eaten sandwich?” and “Are these smiley-face boxers yours?” and “Do you have a hammer so I can put the shelves back in the bookcase?”  
  
So in the end Rodney gives in and starts ordering John around, because obviously the guy is an idiot who needs to be told what to do—although he has an annoying habit of talking back and being sarcastic.  
  
Eventually the floor is visible again, bed and bookcase and desks reassembled, Rodney’s clothes stuffed back in the dresser where they belong (“What, you aren’t going to fold them?” “Fold them yourself—I’m not a maid service.”), and everything more or less where it was before the shitty ex-roommate decided to trash the place. John’s collapsed on the other bed, seemingly oblivious of how unhygienic the bare mattress has to be, and Rodney should probably thank him for cleaning up what was someone else’s mess.  
  
But he can’t quite bring himself to say the words, because he’s still a little angry about having another roommate forced on him so soon after the last one. Instead, he leans against the door frame and stares at John for a while.  
  
“So, you want to go get pizza or something?” he says eventually, like John’s a friend or something, and John sits up with a sigh, scrubbing a hand through his already ridiculously crazy hair.  
  
“Sure. Pepperoni or mushroom?”  
  
  
  
They wind up at Orello’s, because Deenie’s banned Rodney two weeks into the semester for talking too loudly and in too much detail about health code, and John claims that everything at the Pizza Pit tastes like asbestos. Which is clearly ridiculous, and Rodney tells him why in great detail, but John refuses to recant. So there they are in Orello’s, at a somewhat grungy table for two, staring at each other. Or glowering, in Rodney’s case. John just looks tired, slumped down over the table like his spine is actually a slinky.  
  
“You’re a physics major, right?” he says eventually.  
  
“Yes, and what of it?” Rodney snaps, because he’s tired of getting blank looks whenever he talks about what he studies. He should be used to it, has been dealing with an increasingly disinterested world for years, but it still stings.  
  
“Nothing—just noticed you had a lot of books on the subject. Was trying to be friendly.” John’s got his head on the table now, and if the pizza doesn’t come soon, Rodney will probably wind up eating it by himself, because John’s eyes keep sliding shut.  
  
Really, John has no way of knowing that that’s Rodney’s sore spot, that he spent his childhood being told he should ‘be more friendly’, that it’s been the end of more conversations than Rodney wants to remember. Rodney knows this, just as he knows that it’s not John’s fault Rodney’s got yet another roommate, but he just can’t do this yet again—  
  
And he tells John so in a carefully modulated voice (because he doesn’t want to get banned from Odello’s too), using words of few syllables, like he’s explaining something to the neighbor’s dog (after fifth grade, Jeannie started leaving the room whenever he tried to tell her about anything, and his parents had never been willing to listen), pausing only briefly when the pizza finally arrives. But the odd thing is that John’s still wearing a look of sleepy but amiable interest, even when Rodney, in increasing desperation to get the whole ‘what are you, a robot?’ part of the evening out of the way, starts throwing around actual math.  
  
“That’s Maxwell, isn’t it?” John says after one particularly long string of variables and constants, and then yawns like a cat, tongue curling a little and eyes closed. And because it is, Rodney can’t help but fall a little bit in love with John Sheppard. Or would, if, you know, they weren’t both guys and going to be living together (because that could get kind of awkward) and John didn’t have hair like he’d stuck a finger in an electric outlet.  
  
So he pays the waitress, grabs John’s wrist, and drags him out, informing him about the consequences of sleep deprivation and irregular sleeping habits as they go (never mind that Rodney’s been known to pull all-nighters in front of the department’s supercomputers—that’s for science). And John just follows, making _mm hm_ noises as appropriate, with creases at the corners of his eyes and a soft-edged smile Rodney’s never seen on anyone under the age of twenty-eight. It’s a little disconcerting.  
  
When they finally get to the dorm, Rodney has to steer John up the stairs, because if left to his own devices, John will happily spend twenty minutes leaning over the railing, staring at the floor however many dozen yards below. And if the guy gets like this every time he’s sleep-deprived or whatever, Rodney doesn’t see how he’s managed to survive this long into the semester. Or he doesn’t until the RA walks past, and John’s suddenly fully upright and coherent, even if the topic of discussion is the primeness of prime numbers, which is ridiculous, even for a math major (which John apparently is).  
  
Once the RA’s gone, John lapses back into dreaminess, although the talk about numbers continues, and Rodney can’t help but be a little impressed—both by John’s ability to juggle insanely large numbers in his head like they’re three and four, and by the way he actually talks about the numbers. He should sound either insane or cracked, but there’s a note in his voice that Rodney’s heard in his own while talking about particles and waves and the mysteries of matter.  
  
By the time they reach their room, John’s fallen silent again, and when confronted with his bed, he simply kicks his shoes off and curls up under a blanket—no pillow, no sheets. Rodney watches him sleep for a while, half in fascination, half because a little part of him still wants to dislike the guy, but can’t. Eventually he follows John’s example, although he takes the time to brush his teeth first and change out of his jeans.  
  
He’d never admit it to anyone, but it’s easier to fall asleep when there’s someone else in the room, breathing softly.


	2. Take 2 Every 4 to 6 Hours

When Rodney has a bad day, he takes it out on the world at large—stomps and glowers, snaps at people when they offer sympathy, huffs when they don’t. John usually deals with this by handing Rodney a mug of hot chocolate (the good kind, which Rodney loves more than coffee, although he’d never admit it), sticking the (by now somewhat scratchy) tape of _The Goldberg Variations_ into their (technically John’s) beat-up tape player, and then sitting back to let the combination work its magic. After five minutes, Rodney’s gone from ranting about the ineptitude of the TA (who shouldn’t be allowed to teach guppies, let alone the impressionable young undergrads, even if they aren’t much more intelligent than the guppies would be) to grumbling about Glenn Gould’s interpretation of Bach and insistence on singing along, even though it’s a piano _solo_.  
  
Rodney’s pretty easy to handle, if you know how. He’s well aware of this—has become so after months of watching John do the job. For some reason he's not as upset by that as he thinks he should be.  
  
John’s less easy. Where Rodney opens up, cuts loose when he’s tired and frustrated, John shuts down. Rodney’s only just begun to be able to even tell when John’s had a bad day. He’s yet to figure out how to help John feel better—which is John’s own damn fault for always being so close-mouthed about anything personal. But he tries. He hands John painkillers when John rubs his eyes like he’s got a headache, waxes eloquent on all the inaccuracies in the latest SF offering from John’s uncle when John’s staring at his homework despairingly, drags John out to pizza because the dining hall food only ever makes things worse.  
  
It doesn’t always work. Sometimes John’s funk just takes another downward turn and Rodney’s babbling tapers off, and they’re left picking at their pepperoni-and-mushroom in silence. But sometimes it does work, and Rodney is rewarded by John’s smile, the real one, the one that doesn't look like it could possibly be real but somehow is.  
  
Until Rodney met John, he hadn’t thought it was possible for someone’s face to actually light up.


	3. Friendship Like an Anchor-stone

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Collected fic-bits from comments on the original story. The comment about yams is based on a true story from my own college career.

Rodney is shaken out of sleep by an irritated, mechanical growl that had better be John’s alarm clock. It stops before he’s fully awake, the sudden silence shrill in his ears, and he lies with his eyes closed, listening to John try to get out of bed quietly. But the metal frame whines and creaks, and makes more noise than if John hadn’t made the effort. Once out of bed he’s quieter, at least until he smacks what sounds like an elbow into something hard. The resounding _crack_ and bitten-off curse make Rodney wince in sympathy, and he gives up pretending he’s still asleep.

“You can turn the light on. I’m awake already.”

“Sorry.” The light flicks on, revealing John, rubbing his elbow and looking somewhat apologetic. “Didn’t mean to wake you. Usually I can get to the alarm before it actually goes off.”

“Which makes it so very useful.” Rodney squints over at John, eyes not quite adjusted to the sudden brightness. “Is this going to be a regular occurrence? Because if it is, I will be very tempted to do something drastic.”

“Drastic?” John sounds more amused than alarmed. “As in shoot me? Or put yams in my pillow?”

*

They fall into a rhythm that was entirely lacking with Rodney’s first roommate—and, if he was willing to admit it, with pretty much anyone else he’s ever known. John gets up at insanely early hours to go run or row or something, and Rodney gets free coffee at least a couple times a week. 

*

The one time they wind up taking a class together, it almost destroys their friendship. Rodney knows how smart John is, how good he is at thinking on his feet—so it drives him crazy to see John simply stare past the professor’s left ear for the entire class, ignoring all the questions he could easily answer, thereby forcing the class (and by extension, Rodney) to suffer everyone else’s moronic suggestions. (Rodney would answer, but at the beginning of the course, the professor pulled him aside and told him that his grade would be linked inversely to the amount of time he spent talking in class. So he’s filled several notebooks with extremely rude remarks instead, and maintained a 120% average.)

*

John likes guns because of ballistics, yeah, but mostly it’s just fun. He spent his childhood shooting at soup cans and groundhogs (he’s killed at least three, but they still eat holes through his mother’s cantaloupe), going hunting with his grandfather and mother (not that his mother does any actual hunting, but she likes walking through the woods in fall).

And he’s bound and determined to drag Rodney home to the farm at some point—he knows Rodney’s family life is kinda messed up, and wants to share what he has. Because yeah, his father still struggles with depression over losing his legs, and his mother almost died when he was 12, but still. He’s had something of a charmed life, and he knows it. Rodney’s had to spend his life fighting for everything.

And the farm is beautiful, is home, is almost his soul. Although he’s playing at being a mathematician right now, at some point he’ll go back to being a farmer. He doesn’t have the same driving need to prove himself as does Rodney. Mathematics is play—the farm is work, good work.

(And that scares him a little, because it means Rodney’s going to leave him behind at some point—or wind up going somewhere John can’t follow.)

*

John keeps trying to get Rodney to go home with him, promises pie and turkey sandwiches and the best pizza ever. But Rodney can’t help but be suspicious, since all these promises are appended with stories of hunting expeditions and the glories of tramping around with guns in the underbrush at the crack of dawn. Rodney doesn’t particularly want to spend the holiday in an empty dorm—not that he would ever admit it, but he needs people around or he starts to go a little crazy—and he’s certainly not going home for anything less than the death of a close relative, but he’s also got absolutely no interest in appreciating nature or taking potshots at Bambi.

He has a feeling John’s going to wear him down in the end, because it’s not like Rodney really wants to say no—homemade pie? And pizza someone else is paying for? It could be cardboard, so long as it was covered in tomato sauce and cheese and mushrooms.

And he hasn’t been out in the woods since he was ten and making that disastrous (and very brief) attempt at being a boy scout, but maybe it’s not as bad as he remembers. (Plus: pie.)

*

John’s uncle drives up/over to get them, arriving in a pickup truck that looks like it’s been hauling around rocks or something—Rodney’s never seen anything so covered in mud. He stumbles a little when he climbs out, and limps when he walks over, but that must be normal, because John doesn’t say anything about it. There’s a bit of manly hugging and thumping of backs.

“Hey,” the uncle says after he and John are done bruising each other, with a friendly smile and extended hand. “You must be Rodney McKay. I’m Johnny Sheppard.” His grip is hard, but not bone-crushing, his hand grease-stained and callused.

“John and Johnny?” Rodney says, feeling a bit outnumbered, outmaneuvered. He’s only just beginning to realize what exactly he’s agreed to—at least at home (or in the dorm) he knows the players and terrain. “Doesn’t that get confusing?”

“Nope,” John says, and begins shoving their luggage behind the seat in the cab. “I’m John, he’s Johnny—although he’s really Jonathan.”

“You have trouble with names?” the uncle—Johnny (Jonathan? Mr. Sheppard?)—asks, arms folded in a rather intimidating fashion; that’s a lot of muscle. Although he might just be doing it because of the cold. Rodney can see his own breath and feel the inside of his nose, which is a part of his body he spends most of the time ignoring.

“No,” Rodney says, and can’t help wishing a little that he was like a porcupine or armadillo or something, that he could roll up in a ball and stay like that until it was safe to come out. “How long is this trip going to take, anyway?”

“Three, three and half hours,” John answers, emerging from the depths of the truck cab. “Hey, Uncle Johnny, you want me to drive?”

“If you don’t mind. I’m pretty stiff after the trip here.” Johnny stretches as if to illustrate, and yawns. It’s the same yawn John does—showing tongue and teeth, unselfconscious—and almost equally disarming. “I was planning on stretching out on the luggage, if you don’t have anything breakable in there. And if I can fit myself back there.”

“Getting old and creaky, are you?” John says cheerfully, holding his hand out for the keys. Johnny shakes his head, laughing a little, but tosses them over.

“I’ll show you just how old and creaky I am once we get back.”

*

And the woods are (he supposes) beautiful and quiet, John and his mother and grandfather all clearly enjoying themselves. (Johnny’s face has gone hard and distant, and he moves with such precision and intent that he almost looks like a soldier on patrol.) But it’s cold, and branches keep whacking Rodney in the face, and he’s _hungry_ , and—

He tries, he really does, but after five minutes of trying and mostly failing to be quiet, Rodney gives up and puts his foot down.

*

The first time Rodney meets Lucy (for a loose interpretation of “meet”), she’s asleep on John’s bed. John is also on the bed, but he’s awake and bent over notebook and calculator. “Hey,” he says very quietly, like nothing’s out of the ordinary.

Rodney stands in the doorway and stares for a minute, because there’s a _girl_ on John’s _bed_ , and a part of him is going, “Nononono—my room, my friend. _Mine_.”

*

Rodney hasn’t had many friends, let alone romantic relationships, and so doesn’t really know what he feels toward John. So when John starts bringing Lucy around (at first just because her roommate and her roommate’s boyfriend insist on having sex at all hours of the day, and they don’t care whether or not Lucy’s there, but later because he thinks Lucy’s pretty cool—she does crew and makes paper airplanes and knows how to muck out a stall) Rodney can’t help resenting her. Not because John stops hanging out with him, because he doesn’t, but because Lucy’s always there too. Or it feels like she is.

And there’s misunderstandings and a little bit of angst and stuff, and eventually Rodney kisses John, and it feels like kissing Jeannie (back when she used to insist on being kissed goodnight) and John just stands there. And Rodney is hideously embarrassed, but then John drags him over to the arcade and trounces him at Pacman or something and everything’s fine.

*

John (this version of him, anyway) grew up on a farm (there’s a long and complicated backstory to this which I really ought to write out at some point), so he’s used to getting up reeeeally early, which Rodney cannot understand at all. Sure, Rodney pulls all-nighters with increasing frequency as the semester wears on, but to voluntarily get out of bed once you’re in it—crazy.

And John (and Lucy, once she and Rodney come to an understanding) loves to do stuff to Rodney (who is a wimp and not ashamed to admit it) like stick his cold fingers down the back of Rodney’s neck and drip on him after he’s been out in the rain and drop snow down his coat.

Rodney decides he could be actual friends with Lucy after something happens to John (some kind of not-too-major injury) and they sit in the emergency waiting room together, Rodney wishing he could remember John’s parents’ phone number and Lucy trying not to cry, because she was on the periphery of whatever happened to John and is sort of in shock. She does break down eventually, and gets Rodney’s shirt all wet, and after that it’s kind of hard to keep on disliking her.

That’s when he realizes that John doesn’t belong to him. (Not that he’d actually thought that before, except that he kind of maybe had. A little.)

Afterwards, Lucy starts treating him like a little brother. Which is irritating, even though she is two years older than he is.

*

He tries to show them that he does get it—kind of, sort of, a little bit—even though it’s hard. John and Lucy don’t seem to need the same way Rodney does, the way he has for years and just never realized. But he does small stuff, stupid stuff, like play poker with John’s friends (even though they all cheat all the time and Rodney wins only when they let him) and drag himself out of bed on a Saturday morning just so he can go to one of Lucy’s regattas. It seems insignificant in the face of everything they do for him, but maybe it’s enough—they don’t get frustrated with him, as other people have in the past. When he forgets to meet them for pizza, they simply bring it to the lab and play three dimensional tic tac toe until he’s too distracted to continue his calculations. And for some reason, he doesn’t get mad at them for the interruption.

It’s not just that they seem to want to spend time with him, it’s that he wants to spend time with them, even though John’s determined to waste himself on farming (except Rodney’s not sure anymore if he wants to think of it like that) and Lucy doesn’t know what string theory is.

When he has nightmares now, they’re not about other people getting awards that should go to him: they’re about him standing at the podium, Nobel prize in hand, unable to find John and Lucy in the audience.


	4. Ripples in a Still Pool

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which the stargate finally makes a (by-proxy) appearance.

5\. 

If asked, Sam Carter would say she is indifferent to Rodney McKay. She knows little about him: he has a cat (which he brings in photos of, printed on copier paper), a sister (whom he only ever mentions on passing), and someplace he goes to for every holiday (which he never mentions at all, outside of the very occasional scheduling meeting). And that’s pretty much all, aside from a few food preferences she’s noticed from the times they’ve wound up in line together in the chow hall.

Pressed a little, she might allow that his work is respectable, particularly his math, but she thinks he’s sneaking help from someone—and almost certainly not from anyone associated with the SGC. (She doesn’t blow the whistle on him only because a) regardless of who’s doing it, it’s _solid_ , and b) by the time she noticed, anything problematic would have already made itself evident.)

Under actual torture, she _might_ admit that she snubs him entirely on habit now, and only because of a single misstep early in their association, the details of which she can only hazily remember at this point. She’d probably feel bad about it if she had the time to between alien invasions. (She does feel bad, actually, but just a little.)

What makes her a trifle nervous, from time to time, is that she suspects Rodney sneaks bits out of the lab to play with, in addition to his math. But she—grudgingly—accepts that he’s proved his discretion. (Also, she does it herself, every now and then, when she feels like she’s on the edge of figuring something out and can’t quite bear to set it down just because O’Neill’s ordered her to go home.)

So it isn’t really a surprise when she receives a semi-panicked phone call from him the week of Thanksgiving, saying he may have accidentally broken his confidentiality agreement, but that doesn’t matter because in the process he’s found someone who makes O’Neill’s ATA abilities look like card tricks, so could someone please come with the appropriate paperwork to patch things over?

4.

John flies on weekends in the winter, sometimes; his dad served with the guy who now runs the private air strip a couple miles down the road, and they’ve got a sort of barter system going for lessons. It’s mostly bogus, just so John won’t feel guilty for taking advantage of a debt owed to his dad, but that doesn’t make the flying less enjoyable.

He’s toyed with the idea of getting certified as an ag pilot, but he loves rich, turned earth as well as deep, open sky. So instead he continues working the steady soil of his grandfather’s farm, dirt ground deep into the skin of his hands, and is mostly at peace.

Rodney sends daily emails decrying the incompetence of his coworkers, claiming that it’s a choice between telling John in writing and ranting loudly in the middle of his lab the next time someone is stupid. John doubts this—Rodney’s social skills have vastly improved since college—but welcomes the emails anyway. It’s a way to remain connected to the closest he has to a brother, and anyway, most of them are hilarious as well as cutting; it’s become custom for John to read the best bits aloud during after-dinner cleanup. (He’d wash the dishes, but apparently he does them the wrong way, and it’s safer to just accept his role as provider of entertainment.)

Sometimes when Rodney visits (which is both slightly more often than should likely be possible and also frustratingly infrequent), he brings whatever theoretical project he’s working on for the Air Force. It’s all very Star Trek, and probably slightly treasonous for John to look at, but working through the equations feels like being young and in college again, so he trusts that Rodney isn’t careless in what he shares and simply enjoys catching the small, stupid mistakes that always slip in because Rodney gets impatient with variables when they don’t cooperate.

John’s sitting at the kitchen table, bent over the latest offering and bickering with Rodney while Lucy sits across from them, laughing at them like they’re still the idiot boys she met in college, when his mother appears in the doorway, looking a little pale.

“Rodney,” she says, “I found something in your dirty laundry that probably shouldn’t be there.”

“What?” Rodney says, squinting at John’s corrections as though they’re personal affronts. But then his brain seems to catch up with his ears and he looks up at her. “Sorry, what? Did Kepler somehow manage to smuggle himself through airport security in my luggage?”

“No,” John’s mother says slowly. “But I suspect he managed to smuggle something else, and you probably don’t want anyone else to see it.”

Lucy’s eyebrows go up at that, and John can feel his own follow suit, as they both turn to stare at Rodney. But instead of embarrassment, there’s worry on his face, perhaps even tinged with fear. “What?” he says a third time, but is already out of his chair as he says it. “Show me.”

And then John’s alone with Lucy in the kitchen. “I wonder what _that’s_ all about,” she says, still looking a bit amused.

“No idea,” John admits, idly turning a 0 into a red daisy. “I guess we’ll find out, if it’s not some sort of state secret.”

3.

In retrospect, Rodney can see how it was bound to happen—if not to him, then to someone: everyone’s taken home something from work at least once, although none of them would admit it out loud—but that doesn’t make it seem any less implausible.

From what he can reconstruct, it happened like this:

Thursday, he had an argument with Sam Carter over some Ancient gizmo that Colonel O’Neill obviously didn’t even attempt to turn on. It was small and flat and fit comfortably in the palm of a man’s hand. On one side was something that Sam said looked like a camera but Rodney _knew_ had to be a projector. The argument took place in her lab (she had her very own lab! Rodney had to share with three other people, and none of them understood that “shared space” meant “clean up your projects before you leave in the evening or they _will_ end up in a bin under the table tomorrow morning”) and ended with Rodney shoving the gizmo (projector!) into his pocket and stalking off.

The rest of the day passed in a rush of irritation as everything (and one) conspired to prevent him from leaving early, as had been planned. So when he got home (at almost 8 pm) and discovered the gizmo had somehow made it home with him, despite the three layers of security between his (shared) lab and the mountain’s parking lot, he said some very nasty things and put it on his bedside table so he couldn’t miss it when he went back to work. Then, instead of packing (as had been planned), he shoved his dirty laundry into a suitcase, hoping that Ana Sheppard would forgive him for being a presumptuous guest, and went straight to bed because he had a 5:30 a.m. flight to catch the next morning.

At some point during the night, his cat Kepler, who always sulked under the living room sofa when Rodney got the suitcase out, deigned to join him on the bed. This almost certainly involved jumping on/off the bedside table. Not that Rodney thought anything of it at the time.

In the (can it be called morning when the sun won’t be up for another two and a half hours?) morning Rodney rolled out of bed, shoved his pajamas into the suitcase with the rest of the laundry, almost put his shirt on inside-out, shoved his extra house key under his neighbor’s door, and drove down to the airport, a little late and very glad all the traffic lights were green. He slept for almost the entire flight, was welcomed in the airport lobby by Lucy while John waited in the car, and spent the drove home nursing the thermos of coffee Ana had sent for him.

Later that afternoon, Ana claimed his suitcase (he made a token protest) and took it down to the basement to the laundry room. In the process of putting his dirty clothes into the washing machine, she uncovered the gizmo, and when she picked it up, it turned itself on.

Rodney’s learned a bit of diplomacy, over the years, which means that when he calls Sam because her extension is the only one he can remember through his wondering panic, he doesn’t begin by telling her that he was right: it _is_ a projector. In Ana’s hands, it turns the dingy, whitewashed cinder-block basement into a miniature solar system, and Rodney thinks it’s the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen. 

2.

It’s a nice farm, as farms go, Jack supposes—worn, but well-mended. Someone’s out in the field on a tractor, and there’s the sound of a man singing in the barn as Jack and Daniel walk past—mucking stalls, from the smell of it.

Their path to the open kitchen door is blocked by an ancient and battered cat sitting on the porch stairs, who looks up at them with the indifference of someone who knows he can’t be moved—although a moment later there’s a call from inside of “Fish, Bashy!” which prompts a rapid but stately retreat.

After exchanging glances—Daniel’s accompanied by a silent mouthing of the name, eyebrows screwed up in the way that means he’s trying and failing to place it; Jack just shrugs—they follow the cat in.

 

Jack knows as soon as he meets her that something is up: Ana Sheppard feels like _family_ , the way some of his mother’s cousins do. He calls her “ma’am” and shows his respects to her husband, who maneuvers his wheelchair with a grace that must have been hard-fought for.

Once safely ensconced in the living room, just Ana and Jack and Daniel, they do the whole show-and-tell: ATA, no ATA; light, no light. Normally, her increasing bemusement would signal approaching difficulties, but every instinct he has is shouting _jackpot!_ , although he couldn’t give a reason for why.

Daniel’s holding forth on the entire history of Earth’s complicated relationship with her stargate, when Jack wins (yet again) his own privately-made bet: Ana corrects Daniel. It’s a minor detail—the pronunciation of a name—and she does it so subtly that Daniel almost doesn’t notice, but Jack certainly does, and that means Daniel does too. (That’s probably a sign of too many ‘diplomatic’ meetings gone south, but it comes in handy now.)

“What?” Daniel can be wonderfully articulate from time to time.

Ana smiles, a small but complicated thing. “Well, that _is_ how it’s pronounced. Or—” she glances in the direction of the door to the kitchen, where her husband is waiting in patient exile. “Or was, back when I knew the place. Perhaps things have changed since then.”

Daniel _gapes_ at her. In a moment he’ll start talking again, faster, and won’t be able to stop, so Jack jumps in while he has the chance.

“So, Ana, let me guess: you grew up a long, long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away.”

1.

Ana’s parents gave her the name ‘Anantha’, which means ‘endless’ or ‘infinite’, but she prefers the name she chose for herself, which means ‘grace’. She willing gave up her infinity, and has doubted the choice only a few times in the cold dark of night; in the mornings she is always sure again. Her husband snores and would sleep until noon if allowed, her son puts too much jam on his toast, her dear, dear daughter-of-the-heart eats breakfast with her hair still in so many knots it’s nearly a beaver’s dam. Soon there will be a grandchild, and Ana’s heart is so full at the anticipation of it that there’s scarcely room for anything else.

So it is a shock almost beyond belief to find a tiny piece of her alien, ancient past mixed in with Rodney’s laundry, to realize that for at least a year now he must have been working on this sort of thing and neither of them knew that the other already knew of its existence. And for safety (for her, for her family, for Rodney) she should probably pretend nothing happened, but—

But.

When John was young, and the early, gray mornings were theirs, she told him the long stories of her own youth, because she couldn’t quite bear to be the only one who knew them. She gave up her immortality, her infinity, but clings to what she can of her long-distant, first mortality. It’s in her bones and she cannot remove it without unmaking herself.

This mistake—on Rodney’s part, potentially on her own—gives her the never-dreamed-of possibility of sharing the full scope of his childhood stories with John, and she cannot deny that to him. If there is even a chance he might be able to _see_ some of the things she’s told him about, to touch pieces of the seeming-fairytales she whispered in his ear when he was small—

She can’t, _can’t_ deny him that.

“Rodney,” she says to the empty laundry room, then clears her throat because she’s been crying and hadn’t noticed.

She waits to go upstairs until her eyes are dry again.


End file.
